campaign finance

This is the second in a series about the Seattle City Council candidates running in the August primary election—the first true test of Seattle’s new district election system. Here’s a quick look at who’s running in Districts 3, 4 and 5. Check back Friday for the update on who’s running in the remaining districts.

Kshama SawantIncumbent and member of Socialist Alternative (SA). (Seattle Business magazine contributor Kevin Schofield wrote about the relationship between Sawant and SA here.) Sawant’s challengers will likely zero in on the perception that she is focused on national issues and party-building efforts rather than the concerns of her district. On the council, Sawant has fought for taxes on large businesses (the “head tax,” which the council passed but ultimately overturned), protections for renters such as limitations on move-in costs (which passed), and legislation that “saved” the Showbox by adding the downtown club to the Pike Place Market Historical District, preventing a planned development.

Logan BowersCapitol Hill resident and owner of Hashtag Cannabis in Fremont who says he’s running to “bring responsibility and achieve real progress” in the district.

Pat MurakamiLongtime Mount Baker neighborhood activist who challenged citywide Position 9 council member Lorena Gonzalez in 2017 and received 29 percent of the vote.

Beto YarceA onetime undocumented immigrant from Mexico and founder of Ventures, a nonprofit that specializes in developing small and immigrant-owned businesses, Yarce has criticized Sawant for being too divisive and not focusing on her district. A member of Mayor Jenny Durkan’s Small Business Advisory Council, Yarce supports reducing the business and occupation tax for low-income businesses and has said he would support a version the “head tax,” which would have raised up to $200 million for housing and homeless services, that had business buy-in a detailed spending plan. So far, he is widely considered the front-running challenger.

District 4 (Northeast Seattle)

Ethan HunterHunter is a 19-year-old Seattle Central College student whose platform focuses on higher education and ending the gender and racial pay gaps.

Alex PedersenA former aide to former city council member Tim Burgess who went on to become a financial analyst for CBRE Affordable Housing, Pedersen is running on an “accountability” platform. In his neighborhood newsletter, he argued against the Sound Transit 3 ballot measure, against the Move Seattle transportation levy, and against a plan to increase density in the University District. Pedersen says he would bring his experience in the private sector to craft “fiscally responsible” solutions to the city’s affordable housing shortfall.

A renter in the Roosevelt/Ravenna area who works as the director of a high school mentoring program, Anderson says she’s running to bring her “deep knowledge of consensus building and commitment to social justice to the Seattle City Council.”

Emily MyersUniversity of Washington PhD. Candidate in pharmacology and organizer with UAW 4121, the postdoc and student employees’ union. Myers says she will bring an “evidence-based” approach to issues as a council member.

District 5 (North Seattle)

Debora JuarezIncumbent and enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation, Juarez is well-known for her almost hypervigilant focus on her district, particularly during the council’s annual budget deliberations. She has fought for the expansion of the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which provides alternatives to prosecution for low-level offenders; worked to secure funding for the pedestrian bridge connecting neighborhoods west of I-5 to the new Northgate light rail station; and oversaw KeyArena redevelopment negotiations last year.

John LombardActivist with the group Thornton Creek Alliance, an environmental group that has sought the removal of homeless encampments on the grounds that they pollute the North Seattle creek. He says homeowners were left out of the deliberations that led to the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, which includes higher densities on some land that is currently zoned single-family

Alex TsimermanPerennial public commenter who refers to city council members as Nazis (while giving the Nazi salute) and has run unsuccessfully for several local offices.

Ann Davison Sattler
Attorney and former Seattle Supersonics employee who has said she’s running because homelessness has gotten out of control and current laws aren’t being enforced. Sattler recently told Saul Spady, the Dick’s Burgers scion turned conservative-radio DJ, that she would focus on mental health, substance abuse, and cleaning up the streets by ramping up criminal prosecutions.

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This piece—an early roundup of candidates for the seven open city council seats—originally appeared on Seattle magazine’s website; parts 2 and 3 will be out later this week.

Six years ago, Seattle voters decided they wanted to elect seven of their nine city council members by geographical district, leading to the city’s first district elections in almost 100 years, in 2015.

It was a dramatic change in the way Seattle voters choose their representatives. Switching to districts, supporters argued, meant that candidates would have to reach fewer voters, which would in turn lower the financial barriers to entry and lead to more geographically focused campaigns—and a council more focused on specific neighborhood concerns than citywide issues.

It didn’t quite work out that way. In 2015, most of the “district” candidates were incumbents who were originally elected citywide, and the majority of those incumbents won. (Jean Godden, notably, lost in the primary in an election that ultimately went to District 4 newcomer Rob Johnson, and both Lisa Herbold and Debora Juarez—District 1 and District 5, respectively, won in new district seats where no incumbents were running.)

This year is different. Of the seven district races on the ballot, just one district council member who was originally elected citywide—Kshama Sawant, of District 3—will be on the August ballot. Two others from that group—Bruce Harrell (District 2) and Sally Bagshaw (District 7) are not running for reelection, and another, Mike O’Brien (District 6) has not declared his intent but is reportedly trying to recruit someone he can support to step into the race after some less-than-encouraging poll results.

Johnson, meanwhile, is bowing out after just one term. That means that at least three, and possibly four, of the seven districts are truly up for grabs. And nearly every district is in play, either because the seat is open or because the incumbent is embattled. (Lisa Herbold (District 1) and Deborah Juarez (District 5) are widely assumed to be running for reelection, with better-than-even odds to win.)

Here’s a quick look at who’s running in Districts 1, 2 and 3. Check back Thursday and next Monday for an update on who’s running in the remaining districts. The filing deadline for the August 6 primary election is May 17.

District 1 (West Seattle, South Park)

Lisa Herbold
Incumbent; former longtime aide to lefty city council member Nick Licata. Herbold is an idiosyncratic part of the council’s left wing, advocating strongly for renters and against gentrification while supporting policies that preserve single-family zoning and getting deep into the weeds on behalf of little-known West Seattle issues.

Brendan Kolding
Seattle Police Department officer who has sought office unsuccessfully several times before, running against state Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon in 2014 and state Sen. Eileen Cody in 2016 (both D-34); also sought appointment to open seat vacated by Tim Burgess in 2017.

Philip Tavel
Video game developer-turned-attorney who ran for this seat in 2015 and finished third in the primary; endorsed that year by TheSeattle Times for his refreshing, pragmatic sense of analytical thinking and intellectual curiosity” and his skepticism about local tax levies.

Isaiah T. Willoughby
District 1 resident with a lengthy criminal record whose organizational title on the Seattle elections website is “Promoting Healthy Minds and Spirits.”

Ari HoffmanBusinessman who last year demanded $230,000 from the city for “homeless-related damages” to two North Seattle Jewish cemeteries on behalf of the cemetery board. Hoffman’s platform promotes deregulation, lower taxes, and strict law enforcement against drug users and homeless people who “who have no interest in helping themselves,” according to his campaign website.

Tammy Morales
Morales, a community organizer and member of the Seattle Human Rights Commission, came close to beating incumbent Bruce Harrell in 2015. Since then, she has become a vocal member of the Democratic Socialists of America with a platform that highlights racial equity, preventing displacement, and focusing on housing rather than “criminalizing homelessness.”

Phyllis PorterA longtime safe-streets advocate, former Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board member and leader of Rainier Neighborhood Greenways, Porter organized a protest on Rainier Avenue S. in 2015 that galvanized efforts to improve safety on one of Seattle’s most dangerous streets for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Matthew PerkinsPioneer Square resident who opposes supervised drug consumption sites, would end funding for homeless housing providers until they submit to city-run audits, and says he will “work to lower property taxes” in the city.

Christopher PegueroA Seattle City Light employee who is running as a Democratic Socialist, Peguero says his top priority will be “working with community to foster transparency, equity, and cultural accessibility in government.” His platform calls for additional 24/7 low-barrier encampments for people experiencing homelessness, allowing multifamily housing in more of the city and repurposing the King County juvenile justice center instead of building a new jail for youth.

Henry Dennison
Socialist Workers’ Party candidate who, according to the SWP paper The Militant, is a rail worker who “has been active supporting farmworkers in the Skagit Valley who fought and won union recognition and a contract with one of the largest berry growers in the state.”

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At her reelection kickoff rally/press conference at Saba Ethiopian Restaurant in the Central District Thursday morning, District 3 city council incumbent Kshama Sawant said she will not participate in the city’s “democracy voucher” program, because its spending limits would make it impossible for her to compete against “corporate [political action committees] and Republican and Democratic establishment people” who want her out of office. Sawant has been in office for six years, including one full four-year term as the council member for District 3, which includes a swath of east-central Seattle between Montlake and the Central District, along with part of Beacon Hill.

“We’re going to have, definitely, more than half a million, probably a million [dollars] thrown at this race to try and defeat us,” Sawant predicted. “As long as corporate PACs and big business lobbyists and big developers don’t have a spending cap, working people need dollars to fuel their campaign, and we do that unapologetically.” Last time she ran, Sawant outspent her challenger, Pam Banks, by nearly $100,000; independent expenditures for Banks totaled about $40,000, while IEs for Sawant or against Banks came to about $27,000.

Democracy vouchers, adopted by voters as part of a package of election reforms in 2015, are supposed to serve two purposes: To level the playing field so that people don’t have to be rich or well-connected to run for office; and to give ordinary people a financial stake in local elections, by providing every Seattle voter with $100 to spend on the candidate or candidates of their choice. In 2017, when two council seats were on the ballot, five council candidates participated in the program, spending a total of almost $1 million. Two of those candidates, Jon Grant and Teresa Mosqueda (who was elected to council Position 8) repeatedly (and successfully) petitioned the city to raise the cap on contributions from $250 to $500. The city also released both candidates from the $300,000 total spending cap, making the first election under the new system one of the most expensive—at $818,000 between the two candidates—in recent Seattle history.

Candidates running for district seats face lower spending limits—$150,000 for the primary and the general combined—and the same $250 contribution limit. By opting out of the program, Sawant will be able to accept contributions of up to $500 and will face no total cap on spending.

Sawant’s claim that business PACs and “CEOs” will amass a million dollars to defeat her is impossible to prove until it happens, and recent history doesn’t provide an exact comparison. The last district elections, in 2015, occurred before the current spending limits and the advent of democracy vouchers, and the only election with democracy vouchers so far included only citywide candidates. But it’s noteworthy that in 2015, Sawant, as an incumbent, outspent all other candidates in her own and every other district—including candidates who actually were targeted by PACs that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, like District 1 council member Lisa Herbold. The big PAC money that year was for Herbold opponent Shannon Braddock ($229,000),Position 9 candidate (and pre-districts council incumbent) Tim Burgess ($219,000), and District 4 victor Rob Johnson ($80,000)—not for or against Sawant. Two years later, both business and labor PACs maxed out at roughly similar levels. So there’s no precedent for the kind of PAC spending Sawant is predicting in any local council race—including her own most recent reelection bid.

Although Squirrel Chops owner and Socialist Alternative party member Shirley Henderson—who hosted a rare in-district meet-and-greet with Sawant at her salon/coffee shop in the new Central apartment building at 23rd and Union last year—praised Sawant’s “accessibility” on Thursday, the council member has been criticized for focusing on issues outside her district and being unresponsive to constituents outside her political circle. Sawant characterized claims that she is unresponsive to people in her district as farcical. “I think there are going to be countless people in the district who would not only disagree with that assessment but who would find that patently untrue and, quite honestly, absurd,” she said. “If you look at just the day-to-day work that we do— first of all, we get dozens of phone calls every day, emails, and other forms of communication. People come in personally. People talk to me in grocery stores, coffee shops, just walking along the street, and we hear about their day-to-day situations related to parks or crosswalks or potholes or any other situation. … We work tirelessly to help address those issues.” (Anecdotally, as a reporter and a resident of District 3, I have heard complaints from Sawant’s constituents that her office is unresponsive to emails and requests for meetings; I have also seen emails to Sawant’s office complaining about her focus on issues specific to other parts of the city, like the “Save the Showbox” campaign.)

But, she added, the “overarching” issues in the district are the same ones that impact the entire city—”the lack of affordable housing [and] the fact that the entire character of our district and of our city is transforming, where ordinary working people and their families … are getting pushed out of the city because the rents have skyrocketed and the city is becoming a playground for the wealthy and corporate developers.” Say what you will about Sawant, but she’s always on brand.

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1. City council incumbent Mike O’Brien has not said yet whether he plans to run for reelection, although was behind a robopoll testing support for O’Brien as well as two potential candidates, state Rep. Gael Tarleton and Fremont Brewing co-owner Sara Nelson, in December. O’Brien has not released the results of the poll, but the news was reportedly not great; the embattled incumbent has come under heavy fire over the last year from neighborhood activists who disagree with his opposition to homeless encampment removals, his support for density, and his advocacy for the scuttled $275 “head tax” on large businesses, which would have paid for housing and homeless services. All seven of the districted council positions will be on the ballot this year; so far, three of the incumbents—Sally Bagshaw (District 7), Rob Johnson (District 4) and Bruce Harrell (District 2) have announced that they will not seek reelection.

2. One of the candidates for Johnson’s position, former Tim Burgess aide Alex Pedersen, ran a blog and newsletter for several years focusing on family life and businesses in District 4. But Pedersen also used the site, called “4 To Explore,” to expound on his own political views. Although Pedersen has delated the blog’s archives from his website—which now displays a statement saying that the blog is “on hiatus” and that anyone who subscribed to the site as an email newsletter can “simply search your old e-mails”—the site lives on in the Internet archive, where it’s possible to read Pedersen’s past writings on everything from the Sound Transit 3 ballot measure (which he opposed) to local levies (he supported the housing and preschool levies but opposed Move Seattle because, among other reasons, he thought it included too much for bike lanes) to homelessness (he wanted the city to “Make it clear we will prioritize housing and taxpayer-funded services for Seattle and King County residents” because “Seattle is branded across the country as “a Mecca” for services” and “seems to be attracting homeless from around the nation”). In 2015, Pedersen endorsed longtime anti-density activist Bill Bradburd over council incumbent Lorena Gonzalez.

3. Christopher Rufo, the former District 6 City Council candidate, contributed $10,000 to his own campaign against city council incumbent Mike O’Brien last year. After dropping out of the race in November, and after refunding about $3,700 of the $12,390 he received in contributions, he wrote two more checks—one, for $5,600, to the Union Gospel Mission, and another, for $10,000, to the Documentary Foundation—the California-based nonprofit film company that Rufo runs. In 2017, the Documentary Foundation reported revenues of $123,819 and expenses of $390,065, including Rufo’s $58,285 salary.

Rufo says he gave his contributors the option of getting their money back or having him contribute it to UGM. “After hearing back from donors, I sent checks to everyone who requested a refund, paid down the campaign’s expenses, and sent the remaining $5,600 in donor contributions to Union Gospel Mission (in that order).” Rufo says he gave the rest of the money to the Documentary Foundation “with the goal of continuing to engage on Seattle political issues,” because he could not legally refund it to himself. (Wayne Barnett, the director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, says Rufo could have refunded himself up to $6,000 under state law).

Rufo says he’s now working on a new film, “America Lost,” which, according to the Documentary Foundation’s website, ” shows the dramatic decline of the American heartland through a mosaic of stories including an ex-steelworker scrapping abandoned homes to survive, a recently incarcerated father trying to rebuild his life, and a single mother struggling to escape her blighted urban neighborhood.”

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1. Mayor Jenny Durkan’s legal counsel, Ian Warner, has left the mayor’s office for a job as public policy director at Zillow, the mayor’s office confirms. His replacement, who started Monday, is Michelle Chen, most recently a deputy city attorney who worked on land use. With Warner out, the mayor’s office retains just two high-level staffers from the Ed Murray era—legislative affairs director Anthony Auriemma and deputy mayor Mike Fong.

2. Speaking of departures: Moxie Media, the political consulting firm that ran Cary Moon’s unsuccessful (and costly) campaign for mayor in 2017, just lost four of its key staffers, including two veteran local political consultants who are striking (back) out on their own: John Wyble, whose firm, Winpower Strategies, merged with Moxie almost exactly one year ago, and Heather Weiner, who has been with the firm since 2016. Wyble was a partner at Moxie for most of the 2000s; when he rejoined the firm, which was founded by Lisa MacLean, last year, I wrote that “A look at Winpower’s local electoral record suggests this is not a merger of two equal partners—as does the fact that the firm will retain the Moxie name.” Wyble’s clients have included include two-time city council candidate Jon Grant and former mayor Mike McGinn, and numerous campaigns for Democratic state legislators, who run in even years. Weiner previously did work for Honest Elections Seattle (the pro-public campaign financing campaign) and several union-backed statewide campaigns.

Asked about the mass departure, both Weiner and Wyble gave versions of the same response: Campaigns are cyclical, it was time to make a change, consulting firms sometimes split up and sometimes come back together. “For me personally, I ran my own company, and I liked that better. That’s what I learned this year,” Wyble said. Weiner put it this way: “Political firms are kind of like boy bands, where they break up and get back together. It makes more sense for me to [go into the slow 2019 campaign season] as an independent consultant.”

Other possible reasons for the breakup: Personality conflicts (MacLean: “I’m not going to get into all of that in this conversation”), or financial difficulties, which MacLean denies. In fact, MacLean said Moxie had “an incredible cycle,” financially speaking, in 2018—”probably our biggest ever”—and explained the split as “typical end-of-cycle, shuffling the deck, musical chairs kind of stuff—people moving on.” The departures—which also include account executive Maria Leininger, who is going to work for Congresswoman-elect Kim Schrier, and Delana Jones, another partner at the firm—will leave Moxie at about half the size it was during the 2017 and 2018 campaigns.

3. The city council will reportedly get its first look at the bids for the Mercer Megablock redevelopment in executive session on Monday morning, with the possibility for some public discussion before the closed-door meeting. The three-acre site is the largest remaining piece of city-owned land in South Lake Union; the city put it on the market earlier this year, in a request for proposals (RFP) that asks potential buyers to include at least 175 rent-restricted apartments in their bid. Affordable housing advocates have suggested that the city hang on to the property and build affordable housing on the site. On the open market, the combined megablock property is likely worth in the range of $90 million; but because the land was purchased, in part, with gas and commercial parking taxes, more than half of the proceeds of any sale or long-term lease will, under state law, have to go to the city’s transportation department.

4. Move All Seattle Sustainably, a new coalition made up of transit, bike, and pedestrian advocates—including the Cascade Bicycle Club, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, and the Transit Riders Union—is demanding that Mayor Jenny Durkan take concrete actions before the end of 2018 to prioritize transit, biking, and walking during the upcoming “period of maximum constraint,” when construction projects and the closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct are expected to create gridlock downtown. The coalition’s list of priorities includes completing the stalled Basic Bike Network downtown; implementing transit speed and reliability improvements (like bus bulbs, longer hours for bus-only lanes, and queue jumps) on 20 transit corridors across the city; and keeping sidewalks open for pedestrians during construction.

In recent weeks, advocates have expressed concern that Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office is shutting members of Cascade and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways out of positions on advisory groups like the Seattle Bike Advisory board, whose former chair, Cascade board member Casey Gifford, was abruptly replaced by Durkan last month. The mayor’s office denies this (in an email to a group of advocates late last month, deputy mayor Shefali Ranganathan said there was “no truth” to the rumor and asked for help in “quashing” it) and notes that Cascade director Richard Smith was on the committee that is helping to select the new Seattle Department of Transportation director. In any case, it’s clear that the transit, bike, and environmental activists on the coalition don’t see eye to eye with the mayor’s office on transportation. On the new MASS website, the group declares the city “off track” and unprepared not only for the upcoming traffic crunch, but “to achieve Vision Zero”—the goal of reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries from traffic violence to zero— “or even Seattle’s insufficient Climate Action Plan.”

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1. The wait for affordable housing at the Fort Lawton military base in Magnolia—on which, as I noted last week, the city is now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for security —will continue to drag on at least until the end of this year, after a city hearing examiner agreed to delay a hearing in an appeal challenging the environmental impact statement on the project until the end of October so that the complainant, Magnolia activist Elizabeth Campbell, can secure a lawyer. The appeal process has already been delayed once, until the end of September, to accommodate Campbell’s lengthy vacation to Europe. Campbell said that she was requesting this second delay because of health concerns that have prevented her from participating in the appeal process.

The motion granting Campbell’s request for a delay, which also denied the city of Seattle’s request to dismiss the six-month-old case, includes a salty dismissal of Campbell’s claim that the hearing examiner, Ryan Vancil, should not be allowed to hear the appeal because he once served on the board of Futurewise, a conservation group with no stake in the Fort Lawton debate, and because he has represented the Seattle Displacement Coalition, which works to prevent the demolition of existing affordable housing, in the past.

The city’s rules, Vancil noted, require anyone who files an appeal before the hearing examiner to file any motions to disqualify a particular hearing examiner quite early in the process, typically at least 7 days before the first hearing. That hearing was in May. “As explained at the prehearing conference [on May 15] the Hearing Examiner has not been a board member or officer of Futurewise for two years, and is not currently a member as alleged by Ms. Campbell. Ms. Campbell identified no specific interest in this appeal by either Futurewise, or the Seattle Displacement Coalition. … Ms. Campbell was clearly aware of these facts [and] raised [them] in the context of a response to the Hearing Examiner’s disfavorable order as a form of retaliation.” In other words, Campbell only decided Vancil’s past association with Futurewise was a problem after he ruled against her on an unrelated issue—specifically, the fact that Campbell hadn’t filed her list of witnesses and exhibits by a mid-September deadline.

(Side note: Vancil may not be on the Futurewise board anymore, but the group’s current board includes two attorneys, Jeff Eustis and Dave Bricklin, who have both fought against proposals to allow more density and housing, including Mandatory Housing Affordability, which allows developers to build more densely in exchange for funding affordable housing; a proposed 12-story building in Pioneer Square that would have replaced a “historic” parking garage; a proposed three-story apartment building in Phinney Ridge, which nearby homeowners opposed because they didn’t want to lose parking in front of their houses; and a proposal to make it easier for homeowners to build secondary units on their property. Given that track record among Futurewise board members, serving on the group’s board could be seen as an indication that Vancil is sympathetic to housing opponents like Campbell. The Displacement Coalition, meanwhile, often fights against density and development on the grounds that it displaces people and drives up the cost of housing.)

Campbell claimed that she was unable to file a list of witnesses because of her poor health. But Vancil was skeptical about that claim, noting that Campbell had managed to five no fewer than separate, lengthy motions over a period of about two weeks in September, Vancil said, which “demonstrate[s] Appellants’ capacity to draft documents and work on this case, and/or the ability to have communicated at an earlier date that Appellants did not have the capacity to identify exhibits and witnesses within the time required.”

The next hearing on the Fort Lawton appeal will be at 9:30am on October 29.

2. A city audit of the Navigation Team—a team of police officers and outreach workers that removes encampments and offers services to people living unsheltered in Seattle—concluded that the city has not done enough to provide the kind of “enhanced shelter” that people living outdoors are most likely to accept, and should consider increasing the use of diversion strategies like “reunification”—that is, connecting people to family, and sending them on their way. The idea of reunification is popular in California, where cities like San Francisco provide bus tickets out of town to homeless people who are able to find a friend or family member who will tell the city they are willing to take the person in. Such programs are controversial because, while they do relocate some chronically homeless people outside city limits, little is known about how people in such programs fare at the end of what are often cross-country journeys, and horror stories abound.

Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposed budget for the Human Services Department notes that enhanced shelters, which provide case management, a place to store possessions, and a place to be during the day, result in significantly more exits to permanent housing than stripped-down, mats-on-the-floor, in-at-9-out-at-7 basic shelters. According to the Human Services Department, 21 percent of people who entered enhanced shelters, like the Navigation Center operated by the Downtown Emergency Service Center, exited into some form of permanent housing. (Permanent housing can include everything from supportive housing in facilities with case management and other services, or a “rapid rehousing” voucher for an apartment on the private market.) In comparison, just 4 percent of those entering basic shelters exited directly into permanent housing.

Despite their higher success rate, the audit found that enhanced shelters are often full, making it impossible for the Navigation Team to refer many, if any, unsheltered people to them. Between March and December of 2017, the report says, there was an average of 18 beds available for all Navigation Team referrals—an average that includes 27 days when fewer than 10 beds were available, and four months in which the average daily vacancy was less than one bed, citywide. This was during a period when the Navigation Team contacted more than 1,800 individual people, many of them more than once.

Finally, the auditor recommended that the city consider “bridge to housing” strategies like the ones in place in San Diego and Sacramento, which employ large, semi-permanent tentlike structures that can house tens or hundreds of people in dormitory-style or more private rooms. The structures are similar to enhanced shelter—24/7 and low-barrier, they allow singles and couples to bring pets and possessions with them—but are less expensive because the buildings aren’t permanent.

The idea, which council members Lisa Herbold and Teresa Mosqueda brought up yesterday, elicited a testy back-and-forth between Mosqueda and Navigation Team director Fred Podesta, who interrupted Mosqueda’s question about the bridge-to-housing strategy by saying, “We need to carefully think about, are people going to accept an enormous, 150-person dormitory that’s in a tent? Before we get too bound up in the efficiency of a particular structure type, we have to think about how our clients are going to respond to it.” When Mosqueda picked up her line of question, Podesta interrupted her again, interjecting, “I just think it’s worth asking the question—if our approach is going to be to offer [housing in that type of structure to] people—’Would you go or not?’ We need to ask those questions before we spend $2 million on a tent.” The city of Sacramento estimates that a 300-bed shelter of this type would cost between $3 million and $4 million a year.

3. Saul Spady, the Dick’s Burgers scion and political consultant last seen soliciting money to defeat the upcoming Families and Education Levy renewal and to fill the seven city council seats that will be up for grabs next year with “common sense civic leaders,” may be improperly raising funds for an election campaign without registering with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission and the Public Disclosure Commission.

As I reported, Spady sent an email to supporters in September seeking $100,000 in contributions for a campaign to “educate” voters on why they should oppose the Families and Education Levy ballot measure and support “common sense civic leaders” against incumbent council members next year. The email says that Spady hosted a meeting the previous week—that is, the week of September 3—of “potential 2019 Seattle City Council candidates focused on common sense, fiscally responsible & acountable [sic] government mixed with active citizens who are concerned about the continuing slide of Seattle into the ‘corruption of incompetence’ that we’re witnessing across all sectors of city hall.” The goal of the meeting, Spady continued, “was to engage likely candidates & political donors.”

This kind of unofficial campaigning could put Spady, who owns the ad firm Cre8tive Empowerment, in violation of state campaign finance law as well as the city’s own campaign finance rules. According to the Public Disclosure Commission, new campaigns for or against ballot measures must register with the PDC “within two weeks of forming a committee or expecting to receive or spend funds (whichever occurs first).” The Seattle Municipal Code, similarly, requires campaigns to file with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission as soon as they’ve raised or spent any money, announced that they plan to support or oppose a candidate or an upcoming ballot measure, bought an ad or reserved ad space, or put a survey in the field about a candidate or ballot measure. Filing involves paying a fee (about $1,300), setting up a campaign office, opening a bank account, and designating campaign officers. All of this, again, must be done within two weeks of soliciting money or engaging in any other campaign activities. Spady’s email went out on Tuesday, September 11—more than three weeks ago. As of midnight last night, Spady had not filed any campaign paperwork with either agency.

1.The official request for proposals for developers interesting in buying the so-called Mercer Megablock—three sites that total three acres in the heart of South Lake Union—includes some revealing details about how the city is pitching itself (via JLL, its broker) to potential property buyers. Alongside standard marketing language about the city’s booming economy, growing tech base, and wealth of cultural and natural assets, the Megablock marketing materials tout the fact that Seattle has restrictive zoning and “high barriers to entry for homeownership,” along with some of the highest and fastest-rising rents in the nation, as positive assets that make the city a great place to build.

From the RFP:

This area is also one of the most dynamic real estate investment markets in the country, benefiting from a combination of strict land use planning, topographical constraints on supply, and employment growth that consistently ranks above the national average. Favorable “renter” demographics, positive job numbers, strong population projections and a low unemployment rate, together with high barriers for entry in home ownership, also position the region as a strategic market for multifamily investment gains.

What, exactly, constitutes “a strategic market for multifamily investment gains”? A pull quote in the RFP puts a finer point on it: “Housing prices have grown at the fastest rate in the country for the past 17-consecutive months. The 12.9% year-over-year growth is more than double the national growth rate. Multifamily rents increased by 3.1% year-over-year and vacancy is just 4.2%. ”

Obviously, when you put artificial constraints on housing supply (such as zoning laws that make multifamily housing illegal in most parts of a city), housing prices increase. Usually, we think of that as a bad thing, because it means that all but the wealthiest renters (and those who can afford to buy $800,000 houses) get priced out of neighborhoods near employment centers, transit, and other amenities. But the city’s marketing materials turn this idea on its head: Restrictive zoning, “high barriers” to homeownership, and spiraling rents make Seattle the perfect place to buy one of the city’s last large parcels of public land—a parcel which, if housing advocates had their way, would be used for affordable housing that might help address some of those very issues.

2. After I reported yesterday on the city’s decision to hire a mediator with the Cedar River Group to facilitate a series of conversations with groups that support and oppose a long-planned bike lane on 35th Ave. NE, architect/intrepid YIMBY Mike Eliason dug through the city’s elections website and discovered that the mediator, John Howell, has given money to both Mayor Jenny Durkan (who directed SDOT to initiate the mediation) and onetime city council candidate Jordan Royer (who, along with attorney Gabe Galanda, is representing the Save 35th Avenue NE anti-bike-lane group in mediation). Howell, who is a principal and founder of Cedar River Group, contributed $275 to Durkan last year and $250 to Royer in 2009.

Rules adopted after the passage of Initiative 122 in 2015 bar contributions from contractors who made more than $250,000 from city contracts over the last two years; according to the city’s contractor list, Cedar River Group made $399,757 from city contractors between 2016 and 2018. However, the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission last year dismissed a similar case involving contributions from Paul Allen, who owns a large stake in City Investors (the real estate arm of Allen’s Vulcan Inc.) , concluding that restricting Allen’s ability to donate to local candidates would violate his right to free speech. The “rationale,” according to SEEC director Wayne Barnett, was that “giving a campaign contribution is protected speech under the First Amendment.” I asked Barnett if that finding might also mean that (under Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that unleashed unlimited political spending by corporations) that the contractor contribution restrictions themselves were unconstitutional. Barnett said that was an interesting legal question but that it hasn’t been tested (yet).

1. “Save the Showbox” activists, including city council member Kshama Sawant, put out a call to supporters this past Tuesday urging them to show up next Wednesday, September 19, for a “Concert, Rally, and Public Hearing” to “#SavetheShowbox!” at 4pm on Wednesday, September 19, to be followed by “the City of Seattle’s formal public hearing on the Showbox.” That notice to activists went out three full days before the general public received notice of the hearing, at which the council’s Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development and Arts Committee will take public testimony on whether to permanently expand the Pike Place Market Historic District to include the building that houses the Showbox. That official public notice went out Friday afternoon. (A post rallying supporters on Facebook (or any other social media) does not constitute a formal public notice of an official city hearing.)

Advocates who favor the Showbox legislation, in other words, appear to have received an extra three days’ notice, courtesy of a city council member, about an opportunity to organize in favor of legislation that council member is sponsoring. This advantage isn’t trivial—it means that proponents had several extra days to mobilize, take time off work, and organize a rally and concert before the general public even received notice that the hearing was happening.

Sawant’s call to action, which went up on her Facebook page on Tuesday, reads:

At the start of the summer, the Showbox, Seattle’s 80 year-old iconic music venue, seemed destined for destruction. Then the #SavetheShowbox movement came onto the scene, gathering more than 100,000 petition signatures and packing City Hall for discussions and votes. By mid-August, our movement had pressured the City Council to pass an ordinance put forward by Councilmember Kshama Sawant temporarily saving the Showbox by expanding the Pike Place Market Historical District for 10 months.

This was a historic victory and a huge first step, but the movement to #SavetheShowbox is far from over. The current owners of the building have sued the city and we know the developer Onni will do everything in its power to bulldoze the Showbox, and corporate politicians will certainly capitulate, unless we keep the pressure up.

Why does it matter if a council member gives one interest group advance notice of an opportunity to sway public opinion (and to bring pressure to bear on her fellow council members) on an issue? For one thing, the city is currently being sued by Roger Forbes, the owner of the building that leases space to the Showbox, who had planned to sell the land to a developer, Onni, to build a 44-story apartment building. Forbes’ lawsuit argues, among other things, that Sawant and other council members violated the state’s Appearance of Fairness Doctrine, which requires council members to keep an open mind on so-called quasi-judicial land use decisions (like zoning changes for a specific property) until after all the evidence has been presented. Organizing a rally, and giving one side several extra days to mobilize for a public hearing, could be seen as evidence of bias in violation of these rules.

A key question will be whether adding the Showbox to the historic district, and thus dramatically restricting what its owner can do with his property, constitutes a land-use decision that is subject to quasi-judicial rules. In the lawsuit, Forbes argues that by including the Showbox in the historic district, the council effectively downzoned his property, and only his property, from 44 stories to two, the height of the existing building. Forbes had planned to sell the land to Onni for around $40 million, and is seeking that amount in damages.

2. Dick’s Burgers scion Saul Spady, whose PR firm, Cre8tive Empowerment, took in $31,000 during the four-week campaign to defeat the head tax, is hoping to raise $100,000 to oppose the upcoming Families and Education Levy and to fill the seven city council seats that will be up for grabs next year with “common sense civic leaders.” The money would, according to the email, go to Spady’s firm for the purpose of “digital outreach.”

In an email obtained by The C Is for Crank, Spady says he held a meeting last week with a group of potential 2019 candidates, with the goal of “engag[ing] likely candidates & potential donors to build support for a digital outreach campaign partnering with my advertising agency Cre8tive Empowerment to engage likely Seattle voters via Facebook & Instagram to help them learn more about important city issues in late 2018 and 2019 ranging from:

The first two bullet points are about the Families and Education Levy, a property tax measure which funds preschool, summer school, early childhood and school-based health services, and other programs aimed at closing the achievement and opportunity gap for students in Seattle Schools. That levy passed in 2011 with 63 percent of the vote. Part of the strategy to kill that levy, apparently, will involve informing renters, who make up 53 percent of Seattle households, that their landlords use their rent to pay for things.

The rest of the initial $100,000 would go toward “build[ing] strong & vibrant grassroots communities in Seattle that want to engage on major issues & will vote for common sense civic leaders in 2019,” described elsewhere in the email as “candidates focused on common sense, fiscally responsible & accountable government mixed with active citizens who are concerned about the continuing slide of Seattle into the ‘corruption of incompetence’ that we’re witnessing across all sectors of city hall.” The campaign, Spady writes, will aim to place “positive articles from local leaders” in the Seattle press and to “deliver 3,000,000+ targeted Facebook/Instagram impressions among core targets” over the next three months. Just something to think about the next time you see a slickly produced Facebook ad opposing some proposed homelessness solution, or explaining to you in patient, simple language that when your landlord’s costs go up, your rent does, too.

1. King County Council member Jeanne Kohl-Welles withdrew her support yesterday from legislation that would dedicate up to $190 million in proceeds from the county’s hotel/motel tax to Safeco Field, proposing an amendment that would instead direct almost all of that money to affordable housing instead. The Mariners are demanding the upgrades as a condition of signing a new 25-year lease on the stadium.

King County Executive Dow Constantine has insisted that the hotel/motel tax proceeds must be spent on purposes related to tourism, including improvements to the stadium, but the legislation that authorized the tax actually does not limit the percentage of proceeds that can be spent on affordable housing, nor does it require that any money be spent on tourism at all. Instead, the law says that at least 37.5 percent of the hotel/motel tax must be spent on arts and affordable housing, respectively, and that whatever money remains after that can be spent on tourism. Kohl-Welles’ proposal would increase the affordable housing expenditure to 52.5 percent, leaving about $25 million for stadium improvements.

One thing worth noting as this debate plays out: Mariners owner John Stanton, a billionaire telecom executive who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party and conservative causes, maxed out to just one candidate in the 2017 primary and general elections. That candidate? Dow Constantine.

2. The city council passed a resolution Monday urging the Seattle Department of Transportation (i.e. Mayor Jenny Durkan) to complete the downtown bike network, after interim SDOT director Goran Sparrman informed the council that the city planned to delay the construction of a long-promised protected bike lane on Fourth Avenue downtown for three years while construction projects downtown (including the demolition of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the construction of a new Washington State convention center) reduce the number of lanes available to car commuters.

Mariners owner John Stanton, a billionaire telecom executive who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party and conservative causes, maxed out to just one candidate in the 2017 primary and general elections. That candidate? Dow Constantine.

Council member Teresa Mosqueda, just home from a trip to Minneapolis where she met with members of the bike equity group Tamales y Bicycletas, added language to the legislation emphasizing the importance of creating safe bike routes for low-income people, communities of color, and women. The resolution now says that although the Center City bike network itself is located downtown, “connecting routes to surrounding neighborhoods, and between neighborhoods, particularly in historically neglected communities with higher needs of safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists, must be a focus for the city in making connections with the Center City Bike Network.” The verbiage, along with language about the city’s historical disinvestment in low-income communities and communities of color, serves as another rebuke to unsupported claims that bike lanes “displace the underprivileged” and kill minority-owned businesses in neighborhoods like Wedgwood, in north Seattle.

But will the resolution matter? SDOT is already trying to dampen expectations that the downtown bike lane network will be built within 18 months, as the council resolution demands. And the agency is still figuring out the details of its planned “reset” of the $290 million Move Seattle levy in response to higher-than-anticipated construction costs and lower-than-expected (or entirely absent) federal funds for Seattle projects. Late last month, council transportation committee chair Mike O’Brien told me that “there’s nothing we see right now [in the resolution] that’s a deal breaker,” but added that he hadn’t heard much from the Durkan Administration about whether they planned to move forward on the council’s recommendations, which include new bike lanes from 8th Avenue in Belltown down to 12th Avenue South in the International District. “My sense is they are still getting up to speed on a lot of things,” O’Brien said. “I think the bike capacity in Mayor Durkan’s brain has been spent on the Burke-Gilman trail [completion] and 35th” Ave NE, where anti-bike activists are fighting a bike lane and road restructure. “I don’t know that there’s a ton that has been done on this.”

3. The council also adopted legislation that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, giving Seattle City Light the ability to sell its properties to nonprofit housing developers who agree to build housing affordable to people making less than 80 percent of Seattle’s median income. Currently, the city requires property owned by its electric utility to be sold at fair-market value, thanks to a 2003 ruling striking down a fee City Light imposed to install and maintain streetlights. However, a bill passed by the state legislature last year, House Bill 2382, gives state and local agencies the right to transfer land to affordable housing developers at little or no cost, giving the city new ammunition if it faces a legal challenge the first time the legislation is tested.

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1. City Council member Teresa Mosqueda will introduce affordable-housing legislation that could have major implications for one of the largest land holders in the city, Seattle City Light. Mosqueda’s bill would allow City Light to sell its surplus land to affordable-housing developers for less than market value—all the way down to the amount the city originally paid for the land—and would require City Light to do so if the agency committed to build housing making 60 percent or less of the Seattle median income. (That latter part may be up for negotiation.) For example, if City Light bought a piece of property in South Lake Union 60 years ago for a few thousand dollars, and the land is now worth millions, a nonprofit that agreed to build deeply affordable housing could buy it for the original, decades-old price.

The proposal, if it passes, will mark a significant change in the city’s policy for disposing of excess City Light land, and could invite a court challenge. Currently, the city requires property owned by its electric utility to be sold at fair-market value, thanks to a 2003 ruling striking down a fee City Light imposed to install and maintain streetlights. That ruling found that City Light could not charge ratepayers for any purpose other than providing utilities, and forced the agency to return $24 million to Seattle residents. Mosqueda’s legislation would change this disposition policy. However, Mosqueda’s office maintains that a separate ruling in 2013, in which the state supreme court disagreed with Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman’s claim that it was illegal to build light rail over I-90 because the bridge was built with gas taxes, which are supposed to be spent only on road purposes, establishes a precedent for City Light to sell its property at below-market value once that property is paid off and declared surplus to the city’s purposes.

Separately, Mosqueda’s office says she will introduce legislation that would encourage all city agencies that own surplus land to give away or sell this excess property for below-market values to public agencies or nonprofit housing providers that agree to use the land to build affordable housing. The legislation comes in response to a new state law, House Bill 2382, passed by the state legislature last year allowing state and local agencies to transfer land to affordable housing developers at little or no cost. Mosqueda’s proposal would also allow agencies, including nonprofits to exercise this right even if they don’t have all the money in hand or haven’t secured a development partner.

“Through smart management of public land, and using surplus and underutilized public land for the best public good, we can reduce the cost of building the affordable housing our communities need,” Mosqueda says. “This will also help us realize more community-led affordable housing and small-business development” by giving housing providers more time to pull together funding and development plans for properties that become available.

According to the latest city land inventory, there are about 35 pieces of city-owned land larger than 15,000 square feet that are surplus, “excess,” or underutilized, although some are outside Seattle and not all are suitable for housing development.

2. As I noted on Twitter last week, the anti-head tax campaign formed on May 18 and achieved its goal of repealing the tax on June 12. In the course of their brief effort, they spent nearly half a million dollars, according to their latest filing at the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission—more than most of last year’s city council candidates spent in a year-long campaign.

A large amount of that money went to out-of-town consulting firms, including Scottsdale, Arizona-based firm Morning In America, which was paid $350,000 to gather signatures for the effort to repeal the head tax. Signature gatherers were reportedly paid as much as $6 a signature, belying any notion that the movement to quash a tax that would have impacted nearly 500 high-grossing businesses was primarily a “grassroots” effort. Morning In America, as its name indicates, is a firm closely linked to Republicans; in 2016, the Trump campaign paid Morning In America $256,000 for “ballot access consulting.”

The campaign also paid Swarthmore, PA-based Awareness Analytics Partners $10,000 to target Seattleites with anti-head tax ads on Facebook and Twitter. The firm is also linked to Republicans and right-wing political activism, through its work for individual candidates and national conservative groups such as the D.C.-based Right Way Super PAC. One of the group’s partners, Matthew Elliott, was the head of Vote Leave, the pro-Brexit campaign in England. The campaign was also generous to local burger scion Saul Spady, a political consultant and grandson of Dick Spady, who started Dick’s Burgers. Spady’s consulting firm, Cre8tive Empowerment, received $31,000 for its work on the monthlong campaign to kill the head tax.

3. The state has issued a $24,055 judgment against the King County Democrats for failing to disclose tens of thousands of campaign expenditures and contributions in a timely fashion in 2016, with half of the total suspended if the group doesn’t commit any more violations for the next four years. The judgment, which also includes $12,742 in costs and attorney’s fees, resulted from a series of complaints filed by conservative activist Glen Morgan, who files complaints against Democratic candidates and organizations for violating campaign-disclosure rules—some minor, others significant—in the hope that they will result in significant fines.

As I reported earlier this year, the King County Democrats knew the judgment was coming, but did not know specifically how much they would owe the state. The group was thrown into turmoil earlier this year when its chairman, Bailey Stober, refused to step down after multiple investigations found that he had committed workplace and financial misconduct, including profligate spending on rent, office equipment, and cable service as well as entertainment and travel for himself and his friends. When Stober finally stepped down, after a 13-hour trial in which Stober’s allies turned tables on the woman who accused him of sexual harassment and abusive behavior, insinuating that she was a drug addict who was making up stories to get back at her former boss for firing her, the group had just $3,200 in the bank, with thousands of dollars in outstanding debts.

The group hasn’t filed its latest expenditure reports, so it’s hard to know precisely how much cash they have on hand; at the end of May, they reported raising $3,703 and spending $6,265, a balance of $13,560, with $3,703 in contributions for the month. Between June 4 and July 6, the group has filed contribution reports totaling just over $1,450. They reportedly plan to pay the judgment in installments.